When we talk about Schema-Coaching for Parents (SCP) we mean a special form of psycho-education and parent work, often in addition to the child-focused therapy. The workshop SCP gives insight into how a parent’s upbringing and childhood events – positive as well as problematic – has resulted in a parent’s EMS, including “family schemas” that have been developed and fostered over generations. This deeper insight provides the parents with understanding and helps to disempower old (often trans-generational) maladaptive schemas and modes, finally helping them understand and meet their own emotional needs and their child’s needs.

Teaching Methods:

Powerpoint Presentation, picture material, life demonstrations, and role-play in groups of three or four participants ensure the consolidation and deepening of what has been learnt.

Learning Objectives:

The individual steps of SCP ...
• investigate each parent’s present schema landscape (exploring each parent’s childhood using the YSQ-questionnaire, Couple interview, etc.)
• define how the child’s behavior triggers modes in the parents (the “emotional buttons” of the parents)
• go back into the parent’s childhood in order to clarify which needs were not met (e.g. using chair work, imagery techniques)
• consider what kind of childhood the parent’s own parents had (including which schemas they had and still have)
• sketch a ”schema-genogram“ (over 3 generations)
• use a family-board - a wooden board with wooden figures that represent family members, and - as a further development - assign the schema a figure/symbol in order to get an impression of how the family relationships change when the schema enters and leaves the family
• use the family-board in a double-layer-structure. The ground floor of the model is the family constellation of a parent (when the father/mother was a child) and the first floor shows the current family constellation (in the present). How does the schema effect the family?

Christof Loose, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, CBT for Children and Adolescents, Advanced level certified Schema Therapist for Children &amp; Adolescents; Supervisor and Trainer (ISST e.V.), affiliated with the Institute for Schema Therapy in Cologne (IST-K), Munich (IST-M), Basel (IST-Basel) and Graz (IST-Graz), and in research with Institute of Experimental Psychology,

Department of Clinical Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University Dusseldorf. He works in his own

Private Practice in Dusseldorf, Germany, and is editor and author of ST-CA books and Video-

Learning (DVD), translated into Dutch, Italian, Polish, Turkish and soon in English (2019/20). He

Why Schema Therapy?

Schema therapy has been extensively researched to effectively treat a wide variety of typically treatment resistant conditions, including Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Read our summary of the latest research comparing the dramatic results of schema therapy compared to other standard models of psychotherapy.

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